Parents were still buzzing about what they said was confusion over whether students would be penalized for missing school during the strike.

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Teacher and students walk the picket line in front of Dodson Middle School during day 5 of the UTLA strike against LAUSD in Rancho Palos Verdes on Friday, January. 18, 2019. (Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG)

The teachers strike that shook the Los Angeles Unified School District may be over, but some parents said they’re still confused about issues that emerged over student absences during a tumultuous nine days.

As the walkout that began on Jan. 14 dragged on into the week, district attendance dwindled. Despite an army of substitute teachers and campuses being open for business, a vast school system with half a million students saw its attendance plummet to, at its lowest point, 84,160, as parents pulled their young ones out of classrooms and many students even joined the picket lines.

Many parents felt like they were getting mixed messages about the potential consequences, or lack thereof, for the students who missed any school last week.

UTLA even accused the district of failing to issue a “clear, definitive statement” on how the district is handling absences, effectively “exploiting parents’ fears and knowingly spreading confusion to try to gain leverage.’”

The level of confusion among parents seemed to vary from school to school.

Southern California News Group interviewed a half-dozen parents about their experience and heard from nearly 100 other parents through the Facebook group, Parents Supporting Teachers – a message board that parents have been using to communicate and coordinate during the strike.

Paul Robak has two children who are both L.A. Unified School District students, but attend different schools – his son is a senior at the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts while his daughter attends Dodson Middle School. He said that he received messages last week from both principals stating that schools were open, but their messages didn’t have any information about absences.

Then, he received a note from the district: “While state law does not excuse absences in case of a strike, and students are expected to attend class, principals will work with students and families on attendance,” it read.

And yet, the letter closed with: “At the moment, schools will not be notifying parents of absences…Student absences during the strike will not impact graduation.”

For a man who’s proud of his children’s perfect attendance record, this ambiguity was frustrating. He didn’t know whether the absences would be excused or not. He didn’t know if it would set his kids up for a truancy charge in the future.

He turned to the district’s public television station, where a scrolling chyron alleviated one of his concerns: It said that the absences wouldn’t affect truancy.

“But, that doesn’t really answer my concerns as a parent,” Robak said. “Will my kids have an unexcused absence on their record?”

While the district hasn’t released a public statement since last week regarding student absences, Barbara Jones, a spokesperson for the district, told Southern California News Group via email on Wednesday that “missing school because of the strike is not considered an excused absence.”

“We have to follow state guidelines in terms of what’s an excused absence or not,” she said later in a phone conversation. According to those guidelines, an absence is excused for any illness or medical procedures as well as a handful of unique circumstances, like Take Your Child to Work Day.She reiterated that absences wouldn’t affect graduation, truancy, nor perfect attendance achievements.

But this message apparently hasn’t been clearly delivered to parents.

On Tuesday, the last day of the strike, many parents who kept their kids out of school received automated messages telling them that they needed to supply a note explaining why the child wasn’t in school. It made no mention of the strike.

Cathy Kantner, who has a child at Lanai Road Elementary School, received one of those messages.

“Parents were reaching out to one another, asking if they were the only ones who got the notice,” she said.

No one wanted their child to have an unexcused absence, but it seemed like that meant parents had to lie, she said.

The parents may not have known that a note is required, by law, any time a student is absent for any reason.

“Going back to when I was a kid,” Jones said, “if you were sick or you missed a day, your parents wrote a note. And that’s what parents do. So, we’re saying, we need a note.”

“Some of the teachers were sending e-mails, kind of directing parents how to do it,” Kantner said. “It was a dilemma. If you lie, you could just say your child was ill and would’ve been excused, although it wouldn’t have fooled anyone.”

She ended up sending a note that said she was concerned about a lack of supervision in schools during the strike. But, she doesn’t know whether that will be good enough for an excused absence.

Audrey Wright, who has a child at Hesby Oak Leadership Charter (an affiliated charter that is managed by LAUSD), faced a similar dilemma when she got the same message from her school on Tuesday.

Her note ultimately said that her eighth-grader missed school “due to personal medical reasons.”

“As much as I support … what teachers and UTLA did, I need to make sure that my kid culminates,” she said. “I couldn’t risk this.”

For instance, Margaret Chroman, who has two children in North Hollywood Zoo Magnet High School, said that her principal sent out daily emails that stated strike attendance wouldn’t affect graduation or perfect attendance records.

Within the Facebook group, Chroman’s experience seemed to be a rarity. With all the confusion, parents started circulating templates for notes to send with their children.

Meanwhile, some, like Marian Sesay, who has a child at Justice Street Academy Charter School (an affiliated charter, managed by LAUSD), said that she was sent a template by her school to use for all the days of the strike.

All she had to do was sign.

It seemed that principal discretion, as the district briefly noted in last week’s letter, played a large role in parents’ experiences.

While many parents were getting notices about absences, Robak said that he has never been notified for the handful of days that his two children missed.

“We should have had clear guidance from the start,” he said. “Going forward, I’d like to see absolutely clear, unequivocal messaging both from the district and schools to parents that neither truancy or graduation will be issues at all.”

In emails to Southern California News Group, this is exactly the message that the district has promoted. But, those messages haven’t made their way to parents who are turning to social media in the face of vague and sometimes contradictory messages from individual schools and the district.

After speaking with confused parents, Southern California News Group later called Jones to clarify.

“We told parents 36 different ways that absences were not going to affect truancy or graduation,” she said. “I don’t know how much more clear we can make it.”

She said that the district had no plans to try and communicate this to parents again.

Bradley Bermont is a reporter in Los Angeles. He covers city hall and school board meetings for Pasadena, Pico Rivera, and El Monte. His work has been featured on KPCC, KQED, the Daily Beast, and others. He is the proud owner of a mostly toothless, asthmatic cat who believes she is a dog.

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